Keep Trying

Greg talks to a woman about the importance to keep trying in overcoming her fears and loneliness. This “Nugget” is a short segment from Video Chat 254.  

Transcript:

Keep Trying in Compassionately Understanding Others 

The behaviors we use to feel less alone, make us feel more alone because we use people. And although we might get away with it for a minute, they end up hating it and leaving us and then we're alone. And even if they don't leave us immediately, we're aware that we're manipulating them and so we feel as we feel more alone. It's awful.

You said, “He's really not a jerk trying to be difficult. He's just a lost little boy looking to be loved.” This is remarkable coming from you because your entire life you've been just a lost little girl looking to be loved and here you have the compassion to say that here's a lost little boy. That's that's pretty striking. You said, “When I could see that, I no longer felt the need to run away from him. I was no longer afraid of him.” Perfect. And for you, woohoo!

Keep Trying When Facing Possible Embarrassment

“After the hike, the lady who drove me there, Lisa, invited me to play volleyball at the group, something they do every week after the event. I hesitated. I'm a complete klutz at sports and I was afraid of looking stupid and feared that I'd already pushed past the point of adaptation but I decided to take a chance to go anyway and it turned out to be great.” And let me interject, again, because you moved.

“At first I was hugely self-conscious as I tried to serve the ball.” Those of you who aren't familiar with volleyball, you hit the ball to the other team and then that's pretty much the point begins. “I failed to even make contact with the ball.” So, when you're serving in volleyball, you hold the ball with one hand and you simply hit the ball out of your hand with the other hand, so you really do have to be a bit of a klutz not to be able to hit a ball that you're holding. It's not like it's coming at you 100 miles an hour, so you're right. You are a bit of a physical klutz, but you didn't quit.

And then you continue, “I didn't make contact with the ball, let alone get it over the net, but several people there made an effort to include me and encouraged me and one person in particular went out of his way to show me how to hit the ball. I was amazed when, that when I told myself, ‘okay I can just do this’ and just did what he said and it worked and the ball went over the net.”

How cool is that! I mean who cares where the ball went over the net. There's probably not a person on earth who remembers the score of the game that day, but you kept trying and then you said the ball went over the net again, this is you serving the ball, and then you serve the ball over the net again three times in a row. Very cool, not to getting it over the net, the big thing is that you kept going.

The ball going over is fun, a bonus, but there is no task that we're going to accomplish ever in our lives that is as important as our feeling loved and in and our doing what we can to help other people feel loved. No task is more important than a person. No volleyball score is as important as the love of a person.